‘How would you know?’
‘Because I would.’
Vicky looked at him, new understanding and suspicion dawning in her eyes. ‘Waggoner’s going to do it, isn’t he? He’s going to try to get us out of here.’
‘Are you going to quote me on this?’
‘No.’
‘Then yes. He is going to try to get us out of here.’
‘When?’
‘Soon.’
Vicky looked back through the window at the burning city. ‘Well, he’d better not be late.’
Webster threw an arm round her and pulled her close. No matter how much Vicky DeAngelo liked to pretend she was captain of her own fate, she lived with fear. Everyone on the planet did. Of course, they didn’t know what real fear was. Yet. But when the time came, if they didn’t align themselves with Webster, he intended to show them. At that moment, a bolt of pure cold lanced Webster’s heart. He swayed for a moment and nearly fell. He forced himself to remain on his feet and the feeling went away.
Vicky looked at him with concern. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Of course.’ Webster smiled at her reassuringly. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘You would be. You always are.’ Vicky patted his chest.
But he knew what had happened. Someone had found that cursed scroll that John of Patmos had written. He left Vicky and retreated to the corner. He took his sat-phone out of his pocket and called Eckart’s number.
‘You haven’t found them.’
‘Not yet,’ Eckart replied. ‘We will. It’s just a matter of time.’
‘They’ve found the scroll.’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know. If I did, I would’ve sent you there first.’ Webster made himself relax and take the edge out of his voice. If they had found the scroll, it meant that Lourds had broken the language the Brotherhood of the Scroll had developed.
One of the languages anyway.
For thousands of years, the plan had been in effect. Even the Brotherhood of the Scroll had been breached in the end. Constantine had been but the beginning. He had helped foster the paranoia inside the Brotherhood, making them aware of how vulnerable their knowledge was. God had created man to be open, to have no secrets. God didn’t have secrets. That was one thing man had not understood. And that was why the serpent was so successful in the Garden of Eden. The serpent had encouraged Adam and Eve to know the things that not even God would have been able to explain to them. The serpent had known, but not even the serpent could have explained God’s ways.
They just were.
All it had taken was the suggestion that there were things God did not want man to know. The rift had started then and had not ended.
‘Find them,’ Webster ordered. ‘And when you do, kill them.’
‘What about professor?’
‘Kill him too. I no longer care to know what he knows. Kill him and bring the scroll to me.’ Webster put the phone back in his pocket.
In all his plans, he had never factored in someone as gifted – or as lucky – as Professor Thomas Lourds. Now the man’s skills were going to earn him nothing more than an early grave.
Passage of Omens
Hagia Sophia Underground
Istanbul, Turkey
25 March 2010
In the steady, golden candlelight, Lourds translated the scroll and read it aloud.
Let it be known that this is the last writing of John, also known as John of Patmos. I am an old man, and I am come willingly to the end of my days. I write now under no threat of coercion only what the Lord my God would have me write.
I came to this island to spend my final days in peace, but I did not find peace. I found only the end of the world. I have seen him, I have seen the Beast, the Devil by all his names, and I have seen his efforts to take the world down before Jesus comes again.
I was there when Jesus returned to us the first time, and I saw myself the holes in his blessed hands and his blessed feet. We were not all believers. It changed me to admit this, but we were not. Even after everything we had seen him do, after we had seen him walk on stormy waters, after we had seen him raise the dead, we could not easily believe he had risen after dying so painfully.
As hard as it had been to watch him die, it was harder still to watch him take his leave of us. And more difficult again to take our leave from each other.
Many of us are dead now. In fact, I believe myself to be the last of his chosen alive, and that won’t last much longer.
You have read my visions of what is to come, of the seven years that will plague those who do not truly believe. But I have not revealed everything that will pass.
There will come a day when the Great Deceiver will rise to power among men. He will pass among you as one of your own and you will know him not. He will have practised to be one of you. He will be born unto woman, but he will be darkly evil. In those End Times you will not recognize evil as surely as you may think. But when you know the Devil, know also that no weapon made by human hand will truly destroy him.
Only one thing is capable of that, and I will soon give it to you. It is called the Joy Scroll and it has the power to strip away the Great Deceiver’s might that he will have accumulated by the time you read this.
The Joy Scroll has, like the writing that has led you here and given you these secrets been written in another language. Four keys to this language have been hidden in the places in the mosaics. Together, they will give you enough information to decipher the Joy Scroll.
Now, please forgive me for I am very weary and wish only to see my Master in all his Glory. God be with you and reward you with his mercies.
Lourds looked up from the scroll. ‘That’s all there is. Except for the second scroll.’
The second scroll had been wrapped in the first. True to John of Patmos’s words, Lourds hadn’t been able to read the second scroll.
Joachim looked at the wall behind Lourds. ‘These places then.’
Lourds looked at the mosaics as well. ‘These places. And with everyone pursuing us.’
With a smile, Joachim turned to him. ‘Now you will find your faith, Professor Lourds. With all that is arrayed against us, I think we can agree that we will not get through this alone.’
I don’t know if we’re going to get through this alive, much less alone, Lourds thought.
Basilica Cistern
Hagia Sophia Underground
Istanbul, Turkey
25 March 2010
‘How are we supposed to get the Medusa head to turn over?’ Cleena asked.
They stood once more in the huge room filled with stone columns. Every sound they made echoed throughout the building.
‘With this,’ Lourds said. He held up the first scroll and showed them the end. He had been puzzling over it since he’d first seen it. Now he felt certain that it was a key. But where was the keyhole?
‘Here,’ Olympia called. She’d evidently deduced what the rod was going to be used for as well.
Lourds walked round to her on the other side of the Medusa head. She aimed her light at a crevice between a pair of snakes sprouting from the Medusa’s head. Sliding the rod into the crevice, Lourds felt the channel bottom out. He turned the rod and heard tumblers click. The Medusa head vibrated as mechanisms inside slid into place. Four snakes elongated and became a pedestal. Stone ground against stone as the snake legs took the weight of the head and allowed it to flip upside down.
Lourds watched in amazement. A moment later, what had been a seamless forehead split open and revealed a gap that held a gold ring with a four-inch span. As the noise died away, Lourds reached for the ring and removed it from its hiding place. He felt the inscriptions on the inside of the ring before he saw them. They were etched fine and sharp, looking as though it had been only days instead of two thousand years since they’d been made.
‘What is it?’ Joachim asked as he joined Lourds.
Lourds fingered the notches cut into the ring. ‘Part of a device that, hopefully, will prove to be a Rosetta Stone.’
‘Are you certain?’ Olympia asked.